The Most Wonderful Time of the Year: a Meditation from Ms. V

Okay, I hear you. There are a lot of reasons to think of January and February as the pits, the doldrums, the absolute trough of the year. The glow of the holiday season has faded, it’s bitterly cold, and none of us have had Vitamin D in our bodies in months. Many of us leave the house and come back home in the dark, and the shortness of the days makes it feel like we actually have fewer hours to live. Who could blame us for writing off the whole two-month stretch as a total loss? 

But hear me out.

The bleak midwinter - January and February - are my favorite part of the school year.

So the holidays are over. Big whoop. The holidays are frenzied and stressful, so it’s not so bad to have a stretch of open road ahead of us. A road clear of frenzied gift shopping and frantic holiday meal prep, a road that allows us to get into a genuine groove.

There’s a rhythm to midwinter. A coziness. The days may stretch out in muted grays and the world outside is crisp, sharp, and brittle, but inside, the cold invites good books, big ideas, engaging conversation with smart people. 

And best of all, more than ever before this year, we all know what we’re doing. 

It is a time of quiet confidence. Sixth graders are good at being sixth graders, seventh graders are good at being seventh graders, and so on up the grades. In September all the routines that make up our days were so new - we were adjusting, but now we know the drill, so we can use our cognitive energy for the good stuff - the learning. I don’t need to explain the structure of an Analytical Paragraph to my 6th graders, so we can get into the substance of their arguments, the quality of their evidence. I don’t need to explain to the Seventh Graders how to do a close reading using the observation/inference/analysis framework - they can employ it capably on their own and bring their rich readings to our discussions. No one needs reminders about the snack routine, when to change for PE, study hall protocols - it’s muscle memory now. The pencils are duller, the notebooks more worn, but the work flows easier. What once took effort now feels second nature. We’re humming along.

Now, the thing is that this period - this comfy zone - can’t last forever. Before long, we’ll have learned what we need to learn, we’ll have grown - outgrown, even - those roles we’ve gotten so good at, and it’ll be time to start the chafing process of moving on. 

But for now, for this brief cozy moment, let’s enjoy it.